What movies did you see last week? (3/19-3/25)

Dune - REWATCH. Time to declare myself a hopeless Lynch fanbot. Didn't like much about it (except for some techs) when I first saw it 2 years ago but now...I loved it. It's delightfully campy and strange, but simultaneously feels so earnest in its choices. It's one of the weirdest and most out-there big budget audience spectacles I can remember and even though it's clearly imperfect, it's a heck of a weird ride with some truly glorious visual imagination - the creatures, the makeup (greatest pustule makeup ever?), the amazing production design and costumes. And even though for Lynch himself it's a disappointment because he didn't have final cut and because during shooting he realized that he didn't quite feel at ease with it, there are many great Lynchian things here that go through his entire filmography and even life. Going beyond one's consciousness, the dreamer that must awake, the power of sound and all that. It's awesome.

You Were Never Really Here - An absolutely terrific film from Lynne Ramsay who I just wish was more prolific. Then again, maybe these breaks between movies just make them better. Anyway, I loved this. Ramsay throws every cinematic tool she has to put us right inside Joe's (our main character) head - something that I truly love in film and which is very difficult to do properly. Joe's world (both inner and outer) is a grim and truly dark one yet it feels incredible to go so deep inside it. It is one of the most anti-genre genre films I've seen in a while and the balance between the artful and the pulpy is measured to a perfect degree by Ramsay. It genuinely feels like a painting a lot of the time - each cut is like a new brushstroke while the magnificent sound design gives it its vivid colors. Jonny Greenwood's score is also simply perfect for this film, beautifully dissonant work for a truly dissonant character. A character that is amazingly portrayed by Phoenix who really is one of the greatest actors of the day. A fantastic film.

Nicholas and Alexandra - A solid if a tad dry 3-hour biopic done in a classical studio style which was already a little out-of-date in 1971 but still hasn't completely disappeared by that point. Although this film's box office clearly indicated that the audiences were kinda over it. Interestingly enough, this also has a bit of that wonderful 70s bleakness in its final stages which I appreciated. All in all the closer this gets to its inevitable end, the better it becomes - as flawed and even unlikeable as the titular characters may be, you can't help but feel their losses. And I also enjoyed how it didn't idealize Nicholas II (despite the fact that many in Russia think of him as a saint...literally). It's also really excellent from a tech standpoint with glorious production and costume design and some really excellent photography from the great Freddie Young. But the movie's far from perfect. You do feel the running time, it often keeps you at arm's length in terms of emotional content and it feels like its studio-ness kinda keeps it from being 100% engaging. Yet it's very much worth a watch.

Cleopatra - Though one could argue that the film's production history may be more interesting that the film itself, I really had a wonderful time watching it. A long, but wonderful time. I'm a sucker for a huge classical Hollywood production done well and this hit the spot. You don't watch a film like this for an exciting propulsive narrative, you watch it to dive into it, to luxuriate in the lavishness of it and to just get lost in it for several hours. And I fell for it, warts and all. The sheer exuberance of the eye candy here was so enjoyable to me that I didn't even mind that it was four goddamn hours long. And I was actually rather invested in the story as well. The larger-than-life characters are very engaging and for all the phony sappy dialogue that occasionally causes cringing there are numerous Mankiewicz zingers that make it all worth it. My main problem is that for a movie called "Cleopatra" it feels like the dudes are much more interesting - she doesn't even feel like the centre of the story here, more like a part of an ensemble. An important part, for sure, but still a part. Although I thought Taylor did a fine job. But Harrison and Burton still managed to catch my attention more. Equally enjoyable are the lavish gargantuan sets and thousands of beautiful costumes which must've definitely been a total pain in the ass to design and make. There are even those really fun (and slightly funny) battle sequences in which the toy ships that the generals use for planning sometimes look even more realistic than the miniatures for the battles themselves. It's got pathos, it's got visual magnificence, it's got some juicy performances - it's a lot of fun. Perhaps a bit too much fun at four hours, but fun nonetheless.

Fellini's Casanova - A demanding, at times even exhausting, but ultimately very rewarding viewing experience. I wouldn't call any Fellini movie an easy watch but this has some passages that can feel really hard to get through but after them the film may reach levels of such beauty and even transcendence that it ends up just impressing the heck out of you. It's got tremendous imagination and it's probably the most bizarre Fellini I've seen to date (the sex scenes, of which there are plenty, are among the weirdest I've ever seen) which can work both ways but it's truly something that you won't see from anyone else. Add to that some glorious sets and costumes and a strong central performance from Donald Sutherland and you'll get a wonderful movie the aftertaste of which will probably be terrific.